CAMPAIGN TO DEFEND CPI (M) AND LEFT IN WEST BENGAL - Prakash Karat

The Extended Meeting of the Central Committee held in Vijayawada had given a call for a countrywide week-long campaign against the attacks on the Party and the Left Front in West Bengal. This campaign will be held from September 12 to 18. The entire Party should go amongst the people to expose the nature of the violent attacks on the CPI(M) and the Left Front in West Bengal and to mobilise the people to express solidarity with the Left and democratic movement in the state.

For more than two years, there has been a concerted attack on the CPI(M) and the Left in West Bengal. After the electoral reverses in the Lok Sabha election in May 2009, this attack has been intensified. All the rightwing and anti-Communist forces have united under the leadership of the Trinamul Congress to weaken the Party and the Left. They are doing so by resorting to continuous violence and attacks designed to sever the links of the Party and the Left Front with the people.

Till August 31, 270 members and supporters of the CPI(M) and the Left have been killed. The toll continues to rise daily. There is a two-pronged attack – one is led by the TMC combine and the other by the Maoists. The TMC-Maoist collaboration is an open fact. The Congress party acts as a junior partner of the TMC and its ministers in the Union Cabinet seek to cover-up the TMC leaders’ pro-Maoist stance.

Why is there such an attack on West Bengal? West Bengal is the strongest base of the CPI(M) and the Left in the country. The Left Front government has existed for 33 years after winning seven successive assembly elections. The distribution of surplus land under land reforms in West Bengal constitutes 22 per cent of the total land distributed in the country. The gains made by the working class over the last three decades due to their organized movement are substantial. The Left Front government has stood with the working people and sought to protect their livelihood and living standards in the face of the neo-liberal policies pursued by successive governments in the last two decades. The attack on West Bengal represents an effort to weaken the Left Front which will help the ruling classes to consolidate their neo-liberal project.

On top of this, the role played by the CPI(M) and the Left in national politics in the last few years has been marked by two specific features. Firstly, the Left’s consistent opposition to the neo-liberal policies. This is seen as an obstacle to the realization of the goals set out by big business and the ruling classes. Secondly, the Left is the only force which opposes the strategic alliance with the United States which has been unfolding in the last one decade. It is this role of the Left which has invited the attack on its strongest base in West Bengal. Weakening the CPI(M) and the Left Front in West Bengal would mean weakening the fight against the neo-liberal policies which are being promoted under the aegis of the strategic tie up with the United States.

In West Bengal, the aim of the anti-Communist combine is to oust the Left Front government and reverse the progressive measures which have been taken over the last three decades. The old landed interests wish to rollback the land reforms and get their power restored.

West Bengal has an exemplary record of defending secularism and isolating the communal forces. Weakening the Left will be the precursor for the rise of the communal and sectarian politics. Already we have seen how the divisive forces and identity politics are being fostered by the anti-Left gang up – whether it be the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha or the Kamatapuri movement.

The targeting of the CPI(M) by the Maoists is part of the overall gameplan. The brutal killings of the CPI(M) members by the Maoist gangs are intended to cripple the Party in some of its strongest base – in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. Those killed are Party members and supporters from the adivasis, school teachers, agricultural workers and poor peasants. In a recent incident on September 4, a school teacher who was a member of the CPI(M) local committee was dragged out of a class room in Salboni primary school where he was teaching children and shot dead. Even those who do not belong to the CPI(M) but refuse to cooperate with the Maoists are killed.

It is necessary to expose this brutality and vicious character of the Maoists – how they have become the instrument of the most reactionary and rightwing forces in West Bengal. The rally held in Lalgarh by Mamata Banerjee and the Maoists jointly on August 7 was a public display of this nefarious partnership.

The campaign to be conducted should expose those intellectuals, social activists and so-called civil libertarians who are supporting this murderous partnership. The likes of Swami Agnivesh and Medha Patkar are condoning the inhuman killings indulged in by the Maoist gangs by extending support to the Trinamul-Maoist gang-up. Many dubious NGOs are involved in this anti-Left enterprise. This is a common tactic of the rightwing forces, they enlist the support of the ultra-Left to provide a cover for their reactionary platform.

The campaign should highlight how the Party and the Left are fighting back this anti-Communist offensive in West Bengal. The CPI(M) is going amongst the people and is taking up their issues by launching movements and struggles. The Left Front government has initiated a number of measures to provide relief to the people suffering from price rise, unemployment and the agrarian crisis. Special attention is being paid to the poorest sections. In the areas affected by the Maoist violence, the people are mobilizing and resisting the Maoist depredations and intimidation. Thousands of people are now coming out in rallies and processions against the Maoists in the affected areas.

Though the Party and the Left have paid a heavy price with the loss of so many valuable comrades, their sacrifices will not go in vain. The CPI(M) and the Left in West Bengal cannot be suppressed by killings and violent repression. The defence of the Left in West Bengal is the defence of the gains made by the working people.

It is incumbent upon the entire Party to go amongst the people and rally them against the attacks on the Party and the Left in West Bengal. We should explain how for the working class, the peasantry and all democratic sections of the people throughout the country, the defence of the West Bengal movement will be a defence of their own rights and movements.

PEOPLE’S MARCHES IN THE JANGAL MAHAL CONTINUE RELENTLESSLY - B Prasant

MARCHES of thousands of the villagers and townsfolk in the remotest and most corners of inaccessible jangal mahal in West Medinipur keep its flourish intact – and the rolling stream of the masses – the Red Flag-held high – continue its joyous sweep as the twenty-odd months of virtually siege-like conditions are finally lifted.

It was a very happy occasion for us veterans with advancing years to thrive and prosper on the occasion, and it was on 8 September. The place was Ramgarh. This is the cluster of villages amidst deep, dense forestry, where the killers, who call themselves ‘Maoists,’ had first committed the heinous crime of shooting and leaving to die painfully, muttering agonising but feeble cries for water to drink before passing away thence into history, the first martyr of a dark dawn, a CPI (M) worker and a poor peasant, Comrade Nandalal Pal.

The initial killing was followed by the taking of the lives in the cruellest manners imaginable of CPI(M) workers, and poor farmers all – Comrades Gopinath Murmu, Behari Bhunia, Sankar Hansda and Sankar Pal, all but Comrade Sankar Pal were members of different tribal communities. Many more such vile acts followed. Smell of terror hung over the villages as a pall of plague.

THE TERROR – NOW GONE

This is the place where the Trinamuli supremo had been driven around, a close week or so before, riding pillion to one of the PCAPA ‘leaders,’ on a motorbike, she back-slapping, as the TV cameras rolled, those very sinister creatures of the dim who had killed Comrade Nandalal.

The outpouring on 8 September of the poor and the toiling, the downtrodden and the anguished, the men, the women, the children, the victim and the ill, even the old and the infirm assured us that the jangal mahal would never ever be allowed to lapse back into a reign of terror, ever.

The moving scene for us was the moment when the Red Flag was hoisted and left fluttering in the breezy and hot summer-like conditions, under the intense blue of the open. That the process of the symbolic rally held afterwards at the very spot where the man-hunters had roamed even a fortnight back, made a great many of the marchers cry their hearts out in sobbing great tears openly, and not silently, was expected – but truth to tell, it was a rare occasion of basic emotional nature for us to witness the droplets of joy and relief roll down the gnarled cheeks of the old, and the taut faces of the young.

TRAGEDY - AND THE TRIUMPH

We recalled then with more-than-a-tinge of tragedy the manner in which the depradationists had run amuck for twenty long months, of the dark of the terror-filled days and death-ridden nights, here at Ramgarh area, for far too long this had gone, the villagers had decide then and there— and the CPI(M) had organised them as befitting a vanguard Party of the working class and the toiling masses.

The masses turned, no longer willing to be amidst the shadow of fear-- and the ‘Maoists’ were on the run - any police action was not in the calculation of the common of the dust and the dirt, the grass and the forest, the flower and the strongly-scented wild fruit. They were disgusted with the quality of low-life they had suffered and they chose to march, and the future, they knew, could only get worse, horribly, disturbingly, agonisingly so if they chose not to act and the time was now.

The local leadership of the CPI (M) told us in grave details the expected manner the attackers, complete with their baiters in such ‘political’ outfits as the Trinamulis, and the different gangs of common criminals (the ranks often merged into one another, we must put an interjecting note here, and their abetters in the ranks of the lurking former jotdars, smaller zamindars, and the money-lending sahukars) chose flight as the better part of valour. They fled, and fled and then fled again.

CELEBRATION- AND TEARS OF JOY

The villagers who crowded around in the rally came from the remotest hamlets with such quaint and to us, townsfolk, quite exotic names in their earthy linguistic deconstruction, tribal with each having a connation related to the tribal life at the centre of which remained the tree and the grass.

The villages were DhyangBhahara, Pitrakhuli, Balibandh, Patharnala, Belasole, Sitalpore, Neriah, Joaldanga, Birghasa, Shusunia, and Majurkata, and many others. During one of the sweeps, the villagers caught hold of the local criminal who had been made ill-famed by the left deviationists as ‘Bullet’ Mahato, his given name long buried in a mire of blood of martyrs. He was duly handed over to the police, untouched, unhandled but being forced to walk as a crowd of thousands looked intently at him, he with eyes low, shoulders in a stoop, walk reduced to a creep.

The marchers went on and rejoiced, sang, and danced, and beat up a storm of the resonance of the large kettle drum. We lingered behind, hope burgeoning, and despair in hasty, inglorious retreat. The people had spoken – the jangal mahal had given a grateful listen. Lalgarh is now at a distance of - a days’ worth of march - eight short kilometres.

Courtesy: www.pd.cpim.org

THE EARLY KALIDASA SYNDROME

THE most valuable resource that a country has is its people. The poor are not a liability, but an asset; they are the producers of essential goods and services we use, they hold up the sky for us for a pittance of a reward. The least that a country can do is to ensure that its people get enough to eat, that already low nutritional standards are not compromised. The present government has achieved a dubious record: the level of per head cereal supply and consumption in India by 2007 at 174 kg fell below the 182 kg recorded by the least developed countries and was considerably below the 196 kg level of Africa. By 2008 Indian average cereal consumption fell further steeply to 156 kg owing to large exports and addition to stocks, and is likely to be lower still in the just-ended drought year.

Cereals account for nine-tenths of food grains, which provide three-quarters of both energy intake and protein intake for the average consumer. Average calorie intake and protein intake have both fallen since 1993. The fall in per head food grain supply and consumption is not new, it has been going on for over a decade, yet our leading economists and policymakers have contributed to increasing food insecurity by their refusal to remove the artificial barriers to distribution created by arbitrarily dividing the population into ‘below' and ‘above' poverty line.

They remain as unmoved as Kalidasa proverbially hacking away at the very branch on which he sat — they would rather let food grains rot than feed the poor. What explains this torpor, this near-comatose lack of response to a long-brewing crisis of increasing hunger? The answer is that they simply fail conceptually to recognise that hunger is growing because of the serious misconception they have regarding the behaviour of cereal demand in a developing economy.

ILL-ADVISED POLICIES

John Maynard Keynes had remarked that the world is moved by little else but ideas. Once a wrong idea gets into the head of a policymaker it is very difficult to get it out. Keynes's argument on the paradox of thrift — if every person saves more, the nation ends up saving less — is still not understood 75 years after the General Theory and finance ministers continue to behave like housewives, cutting back spending to balance budgets even though they have to deal with rampant unemployment. Many ill-advised policies we see creating havoc around us arise from incorrect but obstinately held ideas.

The crucial incorrect idea here is that there is nothing surprising about cereal consumption falling — as a country develops and its per head income rises, people diversify their consumption away from ‘inferior' cereals and towards ‘superior' food, including milk, eggs, meat, and so on. Most economists thus believe in what they call a ‘negative income elasticity of cereal demand' and this influences many others, so they actually interpret declining grain consumption in a positive light. Their idea however arises from ignorance and is factually incorrect. It represents a fallacy of composition, in which only a part of total cereal demand — that directly consumed (as boiled rice, chapatti and so on) — is taken into account and cereal demanded as livestock feed converted to milk, eggs, meat, and so on is ignored.

Fifty years of data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation show that as average income rises in a country and diets become more diversified to superior foods, the per head cereal/food grain demand far from falling rises steeply, and average calorie and protein intake rise in tandem. This happens because much more cereals get consumed indirectly as feed converted to animal products.

The higher the average income of a country, the higher is its cereal consumption and the higher the share of the latter, which is indirectly consumed, as the Table shows. The richest country in the world, the United States, consumed nearly 900 kg per head of cereals in 2007 of which only one-eighth was directly eaten and three-fifths used as feed converted to animal products, with the balance being processed. Its cereal consumption was more than five times higher than the 174 kg recorded by India and its normalised calorie intake (namely, deducting 1000 calories as survival level) was two and a half times higher than in India.

China has been raising its income fast — we are talking of purchasing power parity adjusted US dollars — and by now it converts a massive 115 million tonnes of cereal output as feed to animal products, compared with less than 10 million tonnes in India. Its people consume directly as much as Indians do, but owing to more diversified diets they consume nearly 300 kg cereals per head, 115 kg more than we do and their average calorie and protein intake is higher.

Why has India's average consumption declined to such a low level despite rising average income? Since India and China have seen high growth rates, observers as disparate as Paul Krugman and George Bush (wrongly) explained the 2008 global food price rise in terms of fast-rising cereal demand in these countries. They were quite right to expect rising demand in India but quite wrong to think it had actually happened. The fall, which has taken place over the last decade, pushing India below Africa and the least developed countries, is not normal for a country with rising average income, and has resulted from the lopsided, inequitable nature of growth.

Krugman et al did not take account of the adverse changes in income distribution, owing to severely income deflating fiscal policies advised by the Bretton Woods Institutions and faithfully implemented by successive Indian governments after 1991, which sent agriculture in particular into a depression from which it has still not recovered. With unemployment rising, with the fruits of growth going to a tiny minority while the masses suffered income deflation, the effects of dietary diversification by the rich have been swamped by an absolute decline in cereal intake for the majority.

National Sample Survey (NSS) data show for all except two states an absolute fall in average animal products intake as well, along with falling direct cereal intake over the reforms period. No wonder average energy and protein intake have both fallen. People other than the rich are not diversifying diets; even the hungry are forced to cut back and are suffering nutritional decline.

By 2008, the situation was even worse despite good output. A record 31.5 million tonnes of food grains were exported plus added to stocks, reducing domestic cereal supply steeply to 156 kg per head. This happened because the global recession impacted to raise unemployment and food prices spiralled to lower real incomes, so that there was a fresh round of loss of purchasing power.

TIMID & RELUCTANT HALF-MEASURES

What is to be done? Bold measures are required, not the timid and reluctant half-measures we see. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) needs to be seriously implemented to raise purchasing power and extended to urban areas that have seen a steep rise in poverty. For example, in Delhi state the percentage of persons not able to afford 2100 calories per day rose from 35 to 57 between 1993-4 and 2004-5 and the situation by now is definitely worse. MGNREGS can be used as well for a crash programme of building storage facilities for food grains now rotting in the open.

Food distribution through the PDS should be universal, freed from targeting, from the shackles of arbitrary and incorrect official poverty estimates. The recent decision to do away with targeting only in some districts will help very little. The government wishes to restrict the food subsidy but fails to realise that a version of the paradox of thrift operates here as well — the more it tries to reduce subsidy by restricting access, the more the subsidy will rise uselessly to finance holding unsold food stocks as now.

This country can afford to feed all its people at a decent level — what is holding it back is not lack of resources but ignorant and incorrect ideas. Will the economists at the highest levels of policymaking abjure dogmas and think the problem through rationally? Or will they inflict more punishment on the people, subjecting this country to the shame of falling even further behind the least developed countries and Africa?

Courtesy:www.pd.cpim.org